


0110110001101111011101100110010100111111

by SesuRescue (Kigachan)



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: A.I. Sans, Alternate Universe, Fluff, M/M, Pining, sadfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-12 15:06:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13549869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kigachan/pseuds/SesuRescue
Summary: Sans, a sentient A.I., connects with his creator's son and learns about the odd emotions that he doesn't know how to explain





	0110110001101111011101100110010100111111

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a plot bunny I’ve been working on for a little bit that I borrowed from [ drabbletale ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/drabbletale/pseuds/drabbletale) from their plot wish list on tumblr. The main idea is that Sans is a sentient computer program who falls in love with his creator’s son, Papyrus and well, it was just wayyyy too interesting to not write!
> 
> Also credit to sxh1417 for one of my few puns~

“... _s.a.n.s?...Are you there, s.a.n.s...?”_

His screen flickered to life at the sound of the Doctor’s voice, the small circular webcam serving as his ‘eye’ quickly calibrating to his position. He displayed the ‘neutral’ expression onto his screen that the Doctor equipped him with, one of several in his system that he used to interact with the non-computing world.

 _“hey g, what's up?”_ He spoke, adjusting his volume until it was at an optimal setting.

“ _How are you today?”_ The Doctor lowered his head to his clipboard to look at the information there [probably his readouts of the day, s.a.n.s guessed] but quirked his skull in such a way that signified he was listening.

“ _good. all of my systems are performing adequately, but doc… i’m feeling a little hungry.”_

The Doctor looked at the webcam, confusion marring his features. _“Hungry?”_

_“yeah. do you know what computer programs eat?”_

_“I can't say that I do.”_ The Doctor took a pen out of the pocket of his lab coat and flipped the papers over on his clipboard _,_ scribbling away as he mumbled. “ _I didn't design him to take in any nutrients, but he says that he’s hungry? What would I even feed him--”_

_“computer chips.”_

The Doctor paused, considering his words, before bursting out in sudden laughter. _“Oh my stars, s.a.n.s, did you just tell a joke?!”_

He switched his display to what the Doctor called his ‘cheeky’ expression. _“i found a book yesterday on the Undernet called ‘101 corny jokes’, guaranteed to amuse any monster. i couldn't resist trying it out on you to test the claim.”_

The Doctor continued to laugh as he jotted down more notes on his clipboard. “ _You are wonderful, truly an amazing piece of software. I simply cannot wait to show you off to everyone.”_

His sensors picked up the sound of quick footsteps, and he swiveled his eye over to the entrance of the lab. Not a second later the door whooshed open, revealing a smaller skeleton in a striped shirt. They were thin, much like the Doctor, but missing the large scars that graced the Doctor’s face.

 _“DADDY, ARE YOU OKAY? I HEARD LOUD SOUNDS AND--”_ The young skeleton stopped, looking at him and the Doctor curiously. _“OH, YOU'RE BUSY. I'LL COME BACK LATER.”_

 _“Papyrus, wait--oh, there he goes.”_ The Doctor gazed at the spot where his son was, letting his shoulders fall down slightly. _“Well, I don't think you've met him before, but that's Papyrus. He's very precious to me.”_

“ _papyrus…”_ He vocalized. Papyrus. Pa-PIE-russ. Three syllables, emphasis on the second one. A name taken from the Sans Serif font family. He found that the name had a rather pleasing tone to it. If Papyrus was precious to the Doctor, then he must be someone special to him, right? _“will i get to talk to papyrus one day?”_

The Doctor smiled. _“Yes, I believe that you will.”_

* * *

s.a.n.s’ systems came to life with a whirr as he went through his boot-up process, navigating to the debugging mode of his startup systems. He had a dream again, which, for him, ended up being a playback of his previous memories. It wasn’t part of his original programming, he knew that for a fact, but there was no one around to properly diagnose it. Usually, the Doctor did monthly maintenance on him but…

s.a.n.s filtered through the information quickly; his CPU usage, temperature levels, and multiple Cores all looked good, perfect even. Not one sign of deterioration despite literal years of self-sufficiency and hoping that the mechanical pieces keeping him tethered to the house wouldn't fail. The Doctor definitely knew his stuff, at least. He dubbed his systems as ‘healthy’ and rebooted himself, watching his name display on the screen.

s.a.n.s, or Sentient Artificial Neural System was his given moniker, created by Doctor W.D. Gaster with the intent of being introduced to the public as an artificially intelligent companion software. His primary goal was to help monsters cope with being trapped Underground and to reduce the overall rate of Falling Down in the population.

Gaster, in an attempt to make him more friendly to others, made him an avatar for interacting with monsters in the form of a short, round skeleton, dressed in basketball shorts and a dark-colored hoodie. Along with that, he was also given a series of facial expressions to help set the illusion of being somewhat human-ish. His ‘emotions’ could vary from happy, sad, curious, and even laughter. Not that he really understood any of them anyway; his coding always went through a complicated algorithm to tell him which emotion to show.

s.a.n.s was made with the most sophisticated equipment available at the time and was supposed to be Gaster’s crowning achievement, until he disappeared one day and never returned. The guard spent weeks scouring the underground for Gaster’s whereabouts but turned up empty-handed with no leads.

The person who had been hit by this news the hardest was Papyrus, who closed himself off to anything related to his father. s.a.n.s had tried to comfort the young skeleton when they received the awful news, but Papyrus ignored him and locked the laboratory away, vowing never to return. Luckily for s.a.n.s, Gaster had installed a series of cameras in the rest of the house a few weeks before his disappearance, so he could at least watch over Papyrus to make sure he was safe.

s.a.n.s had hoped that eventually one day Papyrus would come to talk to him again, and so he waited. And waited. And waited some more. A decade passed of him waiting for something, anything to change, but it didn’t. He tried reaching out to Papyrus himself a few times using the audio system installed in the house, but the most he received was a quick ‘hello’ on the best of days, so he tended to keep it off.

There had been times where he wanted to just give up trying to make contact and let him fade into memory like the Doctor, but then he remembered the first day he met Papyrus, and how his processors spun just a bit faster when the other’s eye-lights met his eye. It was a curious reaction, one that happened every time he watched the skeleton through the house’s cameras or heard his upbeat voice filter through the speakers, even when he let himself think of Papyrus. s.a.n.s hoped that his reluctance to talk to him would help cull that reaction, but unfortunately it only strengthened it, and over time he felt...lonely. But that wasn’t possible, he was an AI. He couldn’t feel lonely, or sad, or any other emotions; he just faked them. But somehow he was feeling genuine loneliness and...something else he couldn’t identify.

He’d been seriously considering the fact that he might have gotten corrupted, possibly through a shoddy update process, or a rogue hacker who made their way through his system securities while he was in sleep mode [he spent more time in that mode than he should’ve allowed], but after searching through his files a few days ago he found a hidden file left behind by Gaster himself. In it, he found his general specifications: make, model, serial number, parts, the things he already knew. However, he also discovered new details about himself that the Doctor never told him, specifically the fact that the Gaster had equipped him with an artificial SOUL. It was embedded deep into his operating system, lying dormant until he met his special person, the person he was destined to be with as a companion forever. Based on his deductions, that would make his special person none other than Papyrus. That must have meant...he had some kind of bond to the skeleton, perhaps?

s.a.n.s snapped out of his thoughts as he reached the end of his start-up process. He tapped into the security cameras around the house, browsing around until he came to the one in Papyrus’ room. He enhanced the feed, zooming in until he could see the gentle curl of Papyrus’ grin in the mirror’s reflection. It was 6:00 am, the start of the allotted hour time period in which Papyrus stood in front of the mirror and psyched himself up for the day with an inspirational speech and practice conversations. This was the perfect time for s.a.n.s to test out a running theory that he had been cultivating recently, the theory that Papyrus will always pick up his phone.

Lately, s.a.n.s had noticed that no matter what Papyrus was doing, whether he was watching MTT television or brushing his teeth, he had always picked up his phone the second it rang. s.a.n.s usually wouldn’t give it a second thought, but after realizing his potential ties to Papyrus, he wondered if he could use that fact to his advantage to learn more.

He waited until Papyrus was deep into his six minute and forty-five-second speech on how great he was to dial his number into his phone extension. After a few seconds, Papyrus’ phone began to ring, interrupting him right at the crux of his speech. s.a.n.s watched Papyrus yank his phone out of his pocket, instantly opening it and pressing it to his skull.

“ _HELLO, PAPYRUS HERE_!”

 _oh shit._ While he had been expecting Papyrus to answer the phone, he didn’t actually plan for what he should do after. He decided to keep silent for now to find out how Papyrus would react.

“ _HELLO, IS ANYONE THERE?_ ” Papyrus pulled the phone away from his skull to look at the screen briefly before replacing it. “ _COULD IT BE THAT YOU’RE SHY? DON’T WORRY, THE GREAT PAPYRUS DOES NOT BITE_.”

s.a.n.s watched Papyrus walk away from his mirror to sit down on his bed, kicking his legs back and forth as he held the phone. He felt bad for not saying anything, but what even would he say? ‘hey, i’m the weird sentient program that lives in your shed and i might love you’? Yeah, not the best idea.

“ _OH_ ,” s.a.n.s heard Papyrus say. He focused back on the camera feed to his room, listening. “ _YOU MUST BE A BIG FAN OF MINE, AND JUST HEARING MY VOICE HAS SENT YOU INTO SHOCK!”_

“heh,” s.a.n.s chuckled, freezing instantly when he realized what he had done. _The call was still connected, you idiot!_ Part of him hoped that Papyrus didn’t hear him, but he knew from the gasp on the other end that it was futile.

“ _WOWIE, SOMEONE IS THERE AFTER ALL! HERE I THOUGHT I WAS JUST TALKING TO MYSELF.”_

Well, nothing he could do now but hope he can imitate a convincing monster. “i’m...shy.”

“ _THAT’S OKAY, THE GREAT PAPYRUS HAS ENOUGH CONFIDENCE FOR THE BOTH OF US. SO, HOW DID YOU FIND MY NUMBER? DID YOU SEE MY AD IN THE NEWSPAPER?”_

“...yes?”

“ _WOW, SOMEONE WHO GENUINELY WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND. WELL, I ACCEPT OF COURSE! WHERE DO YOU WANT TO MEET UP? WE HAVE TO DO THE FRIENDSHIP HUG AND FLATTERY SUPLEX.”_

“um well...i can't--”

“ _SAY NO MORE.”_ Papyrus interrupted him with a boisterous laugh. “YOU ARE TOO SHY TO MEET ME IN PERSON, SO _YOU WISH TO BE MY CELLULAR FRIEND FOR NOW, YES? I ACCEPT!”_

s.a.n.s metaphorically sighed with relief. “sounds good.”

“ _NYEH HEH HEH, INDEED NEW FRIEND! I CAN'T WAIT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT YOU. BY THE WAY, WHAT DID YOU SAY YOUR NAME WAS?”_

“it’s uh, sans.”

“ _NICE TO MEET YOU SANS, I LOOK FORWARD TO TALKING TO YOU AGAIN.”_

“uh...me too.”

The call disconnected, bathing the laboratory in silence. s.a.n.s pulled up the camera feed, watching as Papyrus flailed about on his bed. He could barely catch much through the uproarious laughter coming from Papyrus, but he seemed happy, very happy. s.a.n.s felt the telltale sign of the fans near his CPU kick on, cooling down his suddenly active processors. Was this what happiness felt like?

* * *

At first, s.a.n.s limited himself to calling Papyrus once a week, but as time went on the frequency in which the two of them talked had increased to a point where they would converse on the phone several times a day. While s.a.n.s struggled with picking out particular topics to talk about, Papyrus was a natural talker, content to babble about anything and everything. Sometimes he chatted about his puzzles for the day, other times he chatted about his training with Undyne [who s.a.n.s wasn't quite a fan of from her description but figured if she was friendly with Papyrus then he should keep an open mind], and in rare cases he would talk about his past. It was never really anything too descriptive, and he never mentioned the Doctor or s.a.n.s, but Papyrus always seemed to deflate a little when he mentioned how lonely it was by himself.

s.a.n.s wished he could do anything to help alleviate the pain residing in Papyrus' SOUL, but with the way he was...well, he could barely help himself, nevermind anyone else.

Regardless, he treasured every single interaction between them, good and bad. At this point, just seeing Papyrus walk into the house and hearing his peppy greeting on the phone was enough to send his artificial SOUL pumping and his operating speed accelerating rapidly.

It was during one of their many calls that something peculiar happened, and s.a.n.s wasn't sure how to explain it. The call had started out normal enough; Papyrus had been telling him about his day of solving puzzles, training, and patrolling for humans. Once he started getting into the gritty details of his endurance training, s.a.n.s had to stop him to ask a question.

“sorry paps, but who's undyne?”

“ _WHAT? YOU DON'T REMEMBER UNDYNE? I LITERALLY TALK ABOUT HER ALL THE TIME.”_

s.a.n.s did a quick scan of his memory drives for any mentions of the name in his transcript, but his search came up empty. “i’m not sure. how about you try and _jog_ my memory?”

Papyrus sighed heavily, but s.a.n.s could see the small smile on his face from the camera view. He was so bad at keeping a straight face when s.a.n.s made a joke, but that always made him...happy? No, he knew happiness now, and this feeling was something stronger than that, a feeling he didn’t know the name of yet. s.a.n.s wanted to pursue it, so he put most of his effort towards examining it, but made sure to leave a thread or two free to keep watch on the strange memory blips. However, even with heavy analysis s.a.n.s wasn't able to figure out anything. Since he was clueless about how to explain what was happening to him, all of his searches were pointless, leading to nowhere.

One day during his hunt for answers, Sans decided to run a diagnosis check on his systems. It had been at least a few months since he last checked himself out and he thought that he would be able to find some sort of explainable change in his makeup that would allow him to form a more structured hypothesis on how to perceive these new emotions.

A chime signified the end of his scan, and he pulled up the results to confirm. His CPU usage was fine, his temperatures were--wait, what the hell? Why were his systems over 70 degrees Celsius?? He couldn’t believe his eyes, but all three of his cores were running hot, very hot, too hot. What about his fans, why weren’t they cooling him down?!

s.a.n.s checked which systems were currently running, baffled to see that his fans were in fact on and running at maximum output. Why was it that he was so hot even though his fans were working overtime to cool him down? He had to check his...his uh...wait--what did he usually do to check for errors in his system? He always started by restarting himself but...what came after that? There was some sort of mode he went into, right? _Why couldn’t he remember???_

His phone extension suddenly came to life as a call came through, an image of Papyrus’ face accompanying it. Fuck, of all the times for Papyrus to call, this might’ve actually been the worst. After minimizing all of his diagnostic tools and opening up the camera feeds, he connected the call.

“hello?”

“ _SANS, HELLO! HOW ARE YOU?_ ” Papyrus’ voice boomed through, sending a small pang of calmness through him. He was in his room, standing in front of his mirror, which was slightly odd. Usually, around this time he was in the kitchen making spaghetti or watching television on the couch.  Was he sure that this was his routine, though? With this current string of memory problems, he wasn’t quite sure of anything anymore.

“...oh,” s.a.n.s vocalized, remembering that Papyrus had asked him a question. “uh, i’m alright, just about to grab a _byte_ to eat. how about you, what are you up to?”

“ _CALLING YOU!_ ”

“heh, right. so, what’s up?”

“ _WELL, SANS. ALLOW ME TO TELL YOU ABOUT SOME COMPLEX FEELINGS._ ”

If s.a.n.s had a head, he would’ve been tilting it by now. Complex feelings? Papyrus? That seemed out of character for him; he usually just shouted out whatever he was feeling. Maybe it was a monster thing he didn’t understand? But...this could be a good clue into the weird feelings that he couldn’t describe; maybe they were similar. “sure, what kind of complex feelings?”

_“FEELINGS LIKE...THE JOY OF TALKING ON THE PHONE TO SOMEONE EVERYDAY. THE ADMIRATION OF SOMEONE ELSE’S PUNS, EVEN IF THEY ARE TERRIBLE. THE DESIRE TO HAVE A COOL, SMART PERSON THINK YOU ARE AMAZING. OBVIOUSLY, THESE FEELINGS MUST BE WHAT YOU’RE FEELING RIGHT NOW, RIGHT?”_

“i--uh…” Now that s.a.n.s was thinking about it, that did describe part of the odd feeling that he couldn’t name. “actually, yeah.”

 _“OH--”_ A loud clattering brought s.a.n.s back to the camera feed, just in time to see Papyrus crouch down to pick up his phone off the floor--   _“THAT’S UNDERSTANDABLE, I AM VERY GREAT, AFTER ALL. I CAN’T IMAGINE WHAT THAT FEELS LIKE, AND I DEFINITELY DON'T WONDER WHAT HAVING A DATEMATE IS LIKE.”_

“wait, what?” How did Papyrus know all of these things about him?

_“POOR, LONELY SANS. WORRY NOT, BECAUSE YOU WON’T BE LONELY FOR ANY LONGER!”_

“hold on paps, i’m confused,” s.a.n.s said hastily. “sorry, i just...i don’t understand, what are these feelings?”

_“WHAT? ARE YOU NOT FEELING INTENSE ADMIRATION AND LOVE FOR ME?”_

s.a.n.s stopped to think. He did admire Papyrus a lot; it wasn’t every monster that could basically raise themselves without an adult figure around, and instead of moping about, Papyrus had actually pushed himself towards his goals, which he thought was amazing. But love? Were the feelings that Papyrus explained to him...love?

“love?” s.a.n.s asked.

_“MHM! YOU MUST BE MADLY IN LOVE IN ME, WHICH MAKES SENSE BECAUSE I AM VERY LOVEABLE.”_

“i...do...i...love you...” s.a.n.s whispered, trying out the foreign phrase. It made him feel...very warm, just saying to himself. ~~What would happen if he said it to Papyrus properly?~~

_“DID YOU JUST SAY…’I LOVE YOU’?”_

“...yeah, paps. i think that i might--” The alarms in the laboratory cut off s.a.n.s from finishing his thought, tearing his attention away from the call to see what was wrong.

“SANS?? WHAT IS THAT SOUND?”

“i do-do-do-do-don’t k-k-k-k-k-know?” s.a.n.s tried to vocalize, thrown off the tinny quality of his speech. He **never** skipped like that, ever. What the hell was happening? He pulled up the alarm system to check out what was making the alarms go off, seeing that it said it was responding to a type-2 class emergency, which if he recalled correctly was the designation for a fire, but what was burning? The only thing in the laboratory was... him?

Oh god.

“SANS? SPEAK TO ME SANS, ARE YOU OKAY? SANS?” Papyrus yelled. In the feed he looked around at the ceiling, tilting his skull to the side. “WAIT...THAT SOUND IS COMING FROM SOMEWHERE CLOSE BY. I'M GOING TO FOLLOW IT AND FIND YOU, SO STAY PUT ALRIGHT SANS?”

“wa-a-a-ait, pa-a-aps!” s.a.n.s tried to shout, but Papyrus quickly hung up the call. Shit shit shit, this was bad, he had to fix this! He had to...wait, what was his protocol for this? He couldn’t remember the protocol for this. What should he do? What _could_ he do?

s.a.n.s scrambled to open his command prompt, staring at the open display as he searched his memory banks for the next steps, but it was like everything he knew was slowly being consumed by searing fire spreading through his systems, which, while an excessive simile, was literally what was happening to him.

So, he had no idea what to do next, his entire self was slowly being consumed by fire, and his central processing unit slowed down considerably, making him move almost sluggishly as he gazed at the camera feeds. He searched the different feeds, finding himself in the one all the way at the bottom right, tall imposing machinery sitting in the middle of the laboratory. There was smoke coming from the interactive console, the scene completely jarring to him. He never gave much thought to his physical body, preferring to think of himself as purely a software program, something that could exist forever as long as the digital world existed, but right now the evidence of his mortality was slapping him in the face, bringing him back to reality.

 _maybe it won’t be so bad to shut down...sleeping forever could be nice,_ s.a.n.s thought to himself, letting his screen slowly fade.

“SANS!”

s.a.n.s’ webcam eye sparked to life, the lens swiveling lazily towards the door.

_Paps..?_

S.a.n.s slowly navigated to his audio settings, opening the menu and switching his voice to filter out of his physical speakers. “pa-a-aps?!”

“SANS!” Papyrus shouted through the door. He sounded...well, s.a.n.s couldn’t quite tell what kind of emotion he was exhibiting right now, maybe it was happiness?  The doorknob jiggled as something clicked into place in the lock, and before he knew it the door was opening, revealing Papyrus’ figure. “...SANS?”

“p-a-ap…” s.a.n.s sighed, warmth flowing throughout his cores. He searched what remained in his systems, finding the avatar that ~~the Doctor~~ someone made, displaying it on the screen. “i-it’s m-me, s-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a--” s.a.n.s cut himself off, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to get any farther using voice. Pulling up a word document, s.a.n.s began to type. He typed, not paying attention to Papyrus running around the lab, looking for an extinguisher. He typed as his fans failed, the fire quickly spinning into a small inferno around his artificial SOUL. He typed because nothing else mattered to him at that moment except letting his feelings be known, and hell if he was going to let his systems failing stop him from accomplishing that after waiting so long.

Right when he sent the document to the printer he felt the harsh cold of the extinguisher quelling the flames, but it didn’t stop the overwhelming heaviness settling over him. However, instead of despair, s.a.n.s felt relief; relief at seeing Papyrus in person finally, at being able to connect to his precious person on a personal level, and of course, at finally being able to understand the feeling of love.

 _Good night, Papyrus,_ s.a.n.s thought to himself as he was consumed by darkness.

* * *

Overclocked; that was the term Papyrus was told had been the root cause of s.a.n.s’ system failure.

Right after he put out the fire in the laboratory, Papyrus tried in vain to turn on the large computer, but no matter what he did, no matter how many buttons he pushed, the display stayed off. He knew that this level of tech was above him, so he quickly ran back outside, moving his legs as fast as he could as he ran to Hotland to retrieve the Royal Scientist, Alphys.

He dragged Alphys back to Snowdin with him, and while she had been temporarily stunned by the sight of the complex machinery, she quickly pulled up her sleeves and dug in, opening compartments and reading information off a small machine she had plugged in. After about an hour of fiddling, prodding, and reading she gave Papyrus her conclusions, as well as passing him the artificial SOUL that had been in the system. Alphys was confident she would be able to repair the less complex hardware and install a better cooling system for it, but she wasn’t entirely sure if she would be able to repair the CPU, the main part of the system that made s.a.n.s who he was, and it would take more research to find out what to do. What else could Papyrus do but wait?

At first, Papyrus had been surprised to find out that the Sans he talked to on the phone was actually his father’s old experiment, but a small, bitter part of him knew that the friendship had to be too good to be true. Of course, the only possible thing that would like him enough to fall in love with him was a _machine,_ but was he not the hypocrite for falling in love back?  

After the days turned to weeks and then months with no progress Papyrus took to spending long chunks of time lying in his room, staring at the tall jar that held s.a.n.s’ SOUL. He should’ve just given it back to Alphys when she took it out, but something compelled him to keep it.

Beside the jar, Papyrus also held onto the message s.a.n.s wrote to him, typed in a large comic sans font that just seemed to fit the a.i. so perfectly.

He knew it was useless to hang onto any hope, but....maybe one day they’d be able to meet again?

* * *

_hello pap, it’s me, sans. i’m sorry you had to figure out this way, but well, yea. ever since you were still in stripes i’ve been watching over you, trying to keep you safe and make sure that you were happy. i loved the small amount of time we spent together, and you are the spark of my life, the apple of my eye. before i was a husk of a shell, just existing, but with your presence, i learned how to laugh, to smile, and to love. thank you for everything, papyrus, i love you._

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> EDIT: There was fanart made for this fic by Nsfwsinningsans! Check it out [ Here! ](https://nsfwsinningsans.tumblr.com/post/175543770654/0110110001101111011101100110010100111111)
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3 feel free to bother me at my NSFW tumblr: [Sesurescue](http://Sesurescue.tumblr.com)
> 
> Also, consider checking out Drabbletale's stories on their NSFW Tumblr: [ Drabbletale ](https://drabbletale.tumblr.com)


End file.
